Oscar Nominations Tuesday – Let’s Do This Thing!

Well, folks, it’s been a long year. Actually, I can’t tell if it’s been a long year or a short one. It seems like yesterday that I was hearing the Oscar nominations that excluded The Dark Knight from the Best Picture lineup to include The Reader instead. I didn’t think the inclusion of The Reader was what was wrong, but rather the established order of things. Films get put into an Oscars box and they kind of move alone all season in a mostly unpredictable fashion. They are usually the films that have the least amount of baggage, generally speaking, or that they have one unique thing about them that pushes them through.

Put your predictions in the comments section. If you all agree to find the winner, I will award a prize. The counting part of it will be too challenging for me.

More, with my Oscar nomination predictions after the cut.

After the upset the Dark Knight’s exclusion caused, the knowledge that the Oscars were becoming, perhaps, too obscure for their own good (but making some great choices along the way) we found ourselves in the midst of a kind of Oscars renaissance not unlike the 1970s. Or at least, it has felt that way to me. So when the Academy decided to open up the Best Picture race to ten, everyone immediately thought that meant more mainstream genre films would get in to draw more viewers to the telecast and make the Oscars more relevant overall.

There was this idea that they appealed to such a small group of people they would eventually be selected out and there would either be no more Oscars on TV, or the Oscars would move to cable. And so it goes. Now, with ten, there is the opportunity to include both the films that are great from an artistic and cinematic perspective, as well as those the public liked. If all goes according to plan, there will be quite a few films represented that made more than, or close to $100 million. Which films will they choose? With the preferential ballot, it is almost impossible to say with certainty. We can only guess.

I’m going to allow three alternates for Best Picture and one alternate for each of the other categories — and we’ll not include either doc shorts or live action shorts, or shorts of any kind. These can serve as tiebreakers in the event of a tie.

Starting with surest bets and working downward in that order:

Best Picture
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Up in the Air
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
An Education
District 9
Star Trek
Invictus
UpAlternates: A Serious Man, The Hangover, 500 Days of SummerLong shot shocker: The Road, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Blind Side

Best Actor:
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
Colin Firth, A Single ManJust Missing Alternates: Viggo Mortensen, The Road
Long Shot Shocker: Ben Foster, The Messenger

Supporting Actress:
Mo’Nique, Precious
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Julianne Moore, A Single Man
Diane Kruger, Inglourious BasterdsJust Missing Alternate: Penelope Cruz, Nine
Long Shot Shocker: Emma Thompson, An Education

Makeup:
The Road
The Young Victoria
District 9Alt. Il Divo
Long shot: Imaginarium

Best Song:
The Weary Kind (Crazy Heart)
I See You (Avatar)
Stu’s Song (The Hangover)
Almost There (The Princess and the Frog
I Want to Come Home (Everybody’s Fine)Alt. Cinema ItalianoLong Shot: it’s just too wide open of a field with quirky rules so it’s impossible to predict this category.

So there you have it. I might change a prediction here or there, but for the most part, this is how I think it will go. Let’s see how well I do, and how well you do! Remember, don’t predict any of the shorts categories.

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